Once Upon a Washing Bin
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Once upon a time...Fred and George were up to no good, Ginny was literally stuck with Harry, and there's a lot to be said for waiting.


**Author's Notes: **Because pointless fluff is fun. The end.

Once Upon a Washing Bin

"Smarmy, mangy, stuck-up _gits_." Ginny Weasley clenched her fists and threw the empty wash bin into the dirt. She shot a furious glance at the piles of clothing stacked beside her – every article covered in Fred and George's new product, Combusting Cream. "_It was just a relatively harmless little test run, Gin-Gin,_" she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. Using her wand, she filled the bin with soap and water, stirring it with her hands before grabbing the nearest t-shirt and hurling it into suds. "I'll give _you_ 'relatively harmless', you incomparably moronic _prats_!"

The redhead scrubbed mercilessly at the ruined shirt until her knuckles turned red. As the heated water soaked into the Cream, it began to fall off of the cloth – and stick to Ginny's hands. She wrenched her hands from the water and shook them off over the dirt, but to no avail. The Cream was well and truly stuck.

Tears of indignation welled in her eyes as she stormed back into the Burrow. "_Fred and George Weasley_," she shouted, her voice deadly. "_Come. Here._"

Upon hearing her voice, a bleary-eyed Harry Potter stumbled into the kitchen. "What's wrong, Ginny?" He mumbled. "It's eleven o'clock."

She turned her glare onto him, arching an eyebrow. "Yes, and?"

He frowned. "Well … the twins are at the shop, aren't they? Doesn't it open at ten-thirty?"

An icy smile spread across the youngest Weasley's face as she processed her words. "Yes, you're right," she said with a wicked grin. "Perfect. _Public_ humiliation." She trailed off, mumbling about property damage and just how _quickly_ she could destroy all their hard work with one little _flick_ of her wand and did they _really_ think that they were getting away with this?

Harry frowned at her, pouring himself a bowl of cereal. "Ginny?" He asked. "Out of curiosity … uhm … why do you have weird-looking goo on your hands?"

Ginny swiveled her head to look at him. "That's a very good question, Harry," she told him calmly. "And after I've impaled Fred's and George's head on two sticks, I'll tell you."

With that, she huffed into the living room, Harry close on her tail, and reached for the floo powder. She dropped the pot back into the cup holder beside the fireplace and tried to let go.

And then she realized that her hand was stuck to the jar, the goo having attached itself to the plastic. Trying to remain calm, she lifted her hand (and the jar) from the holder and turned to the man beside her. "Harry," she said, her voice calm, "Will you please throw some floo powder into the fireplace?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm not an idiot. I know _just_ what sort of damage you're going to heap on Weasley Wizarding Wheezes, and I'm not supposed to let you do that." He reached forward and wrapped his hand around the jar of floo powder.

Ginny, despite herself, marveled at how … grown up his hands looked. They were rough and large – so large that they wrapped all the way around and touched her own.

Harry tried to tug the jar from her hand. "I can't let go," she told him, the edges of her mouth turning upwards despite herself. "I'm stuck." He frowned, tugging harder. Ginny felt the pull on her skin. "Ow! Harry, stop!"

His eyes flew to hers, despair written all over his face. "Ginny," he said quietly, "I'm stuck too."

She cocked an eyebrow, puzzled. "What? How are _you_ … " She trailed off. _They were rough and large – so large that they wrapped all the way around and touched her own._

He wasn't stuck to the jar, he was stuck to _her_! Her mouth twitched, and she tried to keep from laughing. She was angry, she tried to remind herself, but the look on Harry's face was priceless. She thought back to her seventh year at Hogwarts, and how much she would have loved this situation.

"Well." They started at one another. "Well."

Ginny grinned. "To the Twins'?" She asked, gesturing towards the fireplace. Harry flowered, grabbing a handful of floo and tossing it into the fireplace.

"To the twins'." They stepped into the fire together. It was a tight fit, but soon they tumbled out into WWW. Struggling to her feet (and dragging Harry with her), Ginny felt her anger at her brothers starting to reappear. There was Fred – flirting with a customer, as though his _little baby sister_ weren't _suffering_ because of him.

And George, always the salesman, behind the counter as he entered in costs and totals, doing little jigs as the money total increased and pretending to cry as he subtracted funds due to expenses on the shop.

Ginny gathered all of her insults and took a deep breath as she marched towards Fred. "Hello, brother mine," she chirped cheerfully.

Fred glanced nervously at her and then shot an accusatory glance at Harry. "You were supposed to keep her at home!" He cried.

Harry cocked an unashamed eyebrow. "And I was – until _this._" He held their hands in the air. Fred frowned, puzzled, before noticing the goo. A smirk spread across his face. "A_ha_."

Ginny glowered up at the face of her older brother. "_Fix it_," she said in a deadly quiet voice.

The customer Fred had been flirting with looked amused. "Well, I'll come back later then," she said, excusing herself.

Fred watched her go before turning back to Ginny. "She was about to give me her coordinates, Ginny! You ruined it!"

"The way _you_ ruined all my _clothing_?" She snapped back. "Honestly, what were you _thinking_? What do you want me to do, walk around naked?"

Harry shuffled embarrassedly behind her, and Fred looked stricken. "No!" He cried. "It comes off in hot water, I told you!"

"Yeah," agreed in a dangerously low voice, "It _peels_ off in hot water. And then _sticks again_. To _me._"

Fred shuffled his feet, backing up slightly. "That … uhm … that's just a slight malfunction – "

"Well figure out how to make it _functional_, Fred, before I get this _junk_ on every_ product_ in the _store._ _Understand_?"

Fred gulped, looking over her head at Harry. "You know she's serious when she puts emphasis on every other word," he told him. "All right, all right, Gin. We'll work on it right now. You just … go back home and try not to touch anything, all right?"

Ginny glared at him. "I'm serious, Fred."

"Trust me … " Fred glanced around his precious shop. "Me too." Satisfied, Ginny let Harry lead her back to the fireplace and floo home. They tumbled from the ashes and onto the floor. Ginny pushed herself up on her knees and tried to stand.

She paused. "You've _got_ to be bloody _kidding_ me!" Harry followed her gaze down to their hands, which were tangled (thanks to Combusting Creams) in the carpet. He groaned and Ginny flopped back onto the carpet. "I hate my life," she muttered, banging her head on the floor.

"Well, at least the company is pleasant," Harry offered with a slight grin. Ginny glared at him. Since Voldemort's demise, he hardly seemed to feel any emotion other than cheerful.

_All. The. Time._ Even when they were clearly _doomed_, stuck to the _floor_ together missing out on a perfectly _gorgeous_ day when she could be doing something _productive_, such as _killing her brothers._

"Speak for yourself," she muttered.

Harry smiled at her. "I was."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, ha-ha. Very clever. Make fun of the girl who does your _laundry _and handles your _food_."

After things in the Wizarding world had settled down, Molly and Arthur Weasley decided that the one thing they needed most, now that the children were old enough, was a vacation. They'd been gone for two weeks, which meant that Ginny was designated house mother.

Harry cocked his head. "You always assume I'm joking," he muttered jokingly. "Always thinking the worst of me."

Ginny grinned at him. "Ten years of experience with you, Mr. Potter."

That threw him for a pause. "Has it been that long?"

She nodded absently. "Yep. Well – technically nine, I guess, since we didn't actually _meet_ until I was eleven. I count the year before I went to Hogwarts since I learned so much about you from Ron that it _felt _like I knew you."

Harry groaned. "I don't even want to _know_ what he said."

Ginny grinned wickedly as she mimicked. "_My new best friend's _amazing_, Mum! We killed a _troll_ together! We should make him part of the family – maybe _you_ could marry him, Gin."_

The raven-haired boy blushed. "I would have loved being part of your family. I probably _would_ have married you."

"Gee, thanks," Ginny retorted dryly. "Marry me for my family." She looked up at him dolefully. "There'll be no dating you after this."

She'd meant it jokingly, but he looked surprised. "What? Why?"

"I'm not dating you so that you can get close to my family!" She said with a laugh, oblivious to his panic. She rolled over him, reaching for her wand, which had been discarded in her hunt for the floor powder. Her hand had Cream on it, yes, but she figured if she was going to be stuck to anything, it might as well be a weapon.

And then, because Murphy hated her, just as she was rolling back he reached up to brush a stray lock of hair from his face and accidentally caught her hand with his. She automatically wove her fingers through his and then her eyes widened. They both started at their interlocked hands.

Ginny groaned. "Are you _kidding_?"

She turned her head and realized that their faces were inches apart. "This is _so_ from a bad romance novel," she told him, before lowering her lips to his.

Ten years is a long time, after all.

---

Fred apparated victoriously into the living room, feeling quite proud of himself. "I've found the solution!" He cried. "You see, it was the _soap._ It made the Cream retain its stickiness. What you needed was to … Ginny?"

He noticed, for the first time, that his audience was less than captive.

In face, the pair of them looked quite content to be glued together on the living room floor. He also noted, none to happily, that their hands weren't the _only_ things attached.

"Ginny. Oi! Ginny! Would you mind detaching yourselves for _one_ bloody – "

He saw the hand move but it was too late to run. Ginny, without looking at him or coming up for air, shot a beam of orange light at him. He felt himself flying out of the Burrow and to the yard, where he was promptly dropped in front of a wash bin and a pile of clothes.

There was a note floating above the soap. _Thanks for the Cream (and, subsequently, the boyfriend I've just acquired),_ it read, Ginny's handwriting neat and loopy. _Have fun cleaning my clothes._

And they all lived happily ever after.


End file.
